LIFX 1100-Lumen, 11W Dimmable A19 LED Light Bulb (LHA19E26UC10) Multi Colored – 75W – New By Innovative smart health home item for gift

★☆☆☆☆ I'm updating my review of these lights as I've now had them for a number of months. I'm lowering my review to 1 star. Why? Because they regularly fail to connect to our network even after upgrading our network, putting the lights on their very own wifi network, it is almost daily that one or more of them needs to be power cycled to get them back online. We actually have 29 bulbs ( a mix of a19s, a30s, the minis, and the strips), so we went all in. When you have as many as we have, failing every day or so becomes very frustrating. If you only had a few bulbs, the mean time to failure would be much greater and it wouldn't be as frustrating.So to summarize, great quality lights, terrible wifi implementation, so much so that they might as well be controlled from the bulb itself.--------------------I've purchased quite a few of these bulbs (perhaps 20, believe it or not) taking advantage of recent sales. I purchased some of these, as well as some of the BR30s (which are a bit larger in circumference, and more concentrated, meaning the BR30s are better as a flood while the A19 are better as a regular bulb). I was able to get them all online and they *mostly* stay connected most of the time, but at the same time I believe the reviews that you are seeing saying people are having trouble getting them connected and keeping them connected at all. I think the issue is that because they are bulbs, and get a bit hotter than the typical device that you have on a network (e.g., a laptop, smart phone, etc.) and their wifi radio signals are a bit weaker than normal. Hence, when you have a wifi hotspot that is weak at times (or at locations in a house), you'll have trouble keeping them connected. In our house, we have two access points, located at very different spots in the house so that we get great coverage everywhere, and this might be why it is working (mostly) for us. The other thing I notice is that is is very time dependent - during the day on weekdays, the lights work perfectly and very reliably. On weeknights (and in particular on Fri/Sat night) the lights become less reliable (we have quite a few neighboring wifi networks in our neighborhood, and during those times the radio environment probably becomes more hostile to weak wifi signals). What happens during those times is that some of the lights don't respond for a few minutes, but then eventually recover after a few minutes (a problem that never happens during weekday days).My guess is that the reviewers who are having problems have an even more hostile (i.e., crowded) wifi environment than what we have and perhaps also poorer wifi coverage than what we have. The only way to know for certain if the lights will work reliably for you is to try them out unfortunately.Regarding the lights themselves, when they work, they work fantastically. The colors are superb, and it is great to have all of the different varieties and themes of colors for different times of the day, and the app (on the iphone at least) is good. We have decided to keep all of our lights (and will probably get more), but then at the same time we are planning to further upgrade our wifi equipment (and make it more hostile for our neighbors, it's an arms race :-).Part of me feels like all of the smart devices in the home are using a solution that is a patch over existing old fashioned infrastructure. We have electric power (and hence wired cable) going to every one of these devices. It would be much better to have a universal wired in-home standard for both power and data, and a standard universal plug that could serve power + data within the home (and a bulb socket that did the same). If such infrastructure existed and was pervasive (certainly technologically possible today) it would work much better (although this would not be logistically cost effective and so we are stuck using wifi for our smart home devices unfortunately). I suppose this is, however, not the worst problem in the world.

★★★★☆  UPDATE 07/17/2017:I'd thought I'd a quick update on how the smart bulb is holding up since approx 9 Months when I wrote the original review :- A recent firmware update has made the blub's WiFi much more stable and responsive. No more random disconnects- The smart bulb is now natively integrated with Alexa i.e you no longer have to say the keyword "Ask LIFX", instead you can now ask Alexa naturally for eg "Alexa, set living room brightness to 50%"- Google Assistant is now supported- An update to the Andriod/iOS app has improved the layout a lot and made it easy to use and understandORIGINAL REVIEW BELOW:------------------------------------------ When I first received my package with the Lifx Smart bulb I opened it half expecting it to be dead on arrival - thats because it was freely rolling in the shipping box without any air cushions added - however to my relief the Lifx smart bulb is packaged extremely well in a hard cylindrical tube suspended by a foam cushion which should make survive the harshest of shipping conditions. Tragedy averted! Another thing that struck me was the compact size of this bulb - I was expecting it be larger with all its features, WiFi and a 1100 lumen/75 Watt equivalent brightness rating - however its not much larger than a standard 800 lumen LED bulb and a hair bit smaller than a standard 75 Watt equivalent CFL bulb , this means that it should be able to fit in almost all lamp and ceiling fixtures where you can fit a regular CFL lampCONSTRUCTION & BUILD QUALITY:- The lamp is surprisingly compact for all the features and brightness rating making is compatible with most lamp fixtures (see the comparison in video)- The base of the lamp is made of metal for heat dissipation which also makes the bulb feel quite heavy for its size. The weight might be a bit too much for gooseneck type lamps- The lamp features a flat disc type of glowing surface instead of the more traditional globe type surfaces of most other lamps. This effects its light distribution and perceived brightness ( I'll elaborate it more a bit further on)- The bulb can only use the 2.4 Ghz WiFi band for connecting to your network and in my opinion is a good thing as it gives the flexibility of installing the bulb a greater range from your router. A modern router should be able to bridge your 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands anyway for network visibility.INITIAL SETUP, MOBILE APP & OPERATION: Check my video for the initial WiFi Setup process, mobile app operation and Alexa Integration . I've indexed the video timestamps in case you'd like to jump straight to a particular sectionThe initial setup process can be a bit cumbersome and here are a couple of steps that can make the setup process a bit simpler (also covered in my video):- Switch the WiFi network on your phone to the 2.4 Ghz band during setup- When you plug in the bulb for the first time, it can take upto 30~40 seconds for it to broadcast its WiFi signal & become visible to the App- You'll have to create a LIFX account when you open the app for the first time- The way the setup process works its the App will disconnect the phone from your home's WiFi and connect it the Bulb's own broadcast WiFi Network, transfer your Home WiFi credentials to the Bulb, reconnect your phone back the the Home WiFi and do a firmware update on the bulb. This process can be a bit slow or the transition from one phase to another may not be smoothly managed by the Mobile app. It its best to be a bit patient and you may have to switch the WiFi networks manually between the Bulb and your home network (the app will ask to do so if necessary )- The app can organize the various smart bulbs into three hierarchies : Home (Top Level) > Room > Individual bulb. If personally feel thats one level too much to manage and customize and just Room> Individual bulb would have sufficed like what TP-Link offers- The app allows you to control the brightness & hue of the lamp from very warm yellows to bright blueish white either with set preset temperatures or anything in between for that perfect shade YOU want- There are two separate sections sections where you can control the color of the lamp one of which gives you a more traditional color wheel where you can customize any color your want across the spectrum and then there is another section called 'Scenes' where the colors can be adjusted according to preset scenes. For example there is a 'Santa Scene' which makes the lamp color Red. Duh !- Whats conspicuously missing from the app though is any sort of scheduling ability turn on or off the lamps and preset times- The app allows you to add cool effects to your bulb like a candle flicker , strobe or cycle through various colors as wellALEXA INTEGRATION:- Integrating the LIFX Bulb is another two step process i.e it requires you to enable TWO separate skills on the Alexa App to take advantage of all its features :- (1) The "LIFX Optimized for Smart Home" skill allows you to turn On/Off the blub and control its brightness . This is a Native Alexa App which means you can say the commands in any figure of speech without any special keywords: For Example "Alexa, Turn on the Bedroom Lights" or "Alexa, Set Bedroom lights to 50% brightness"- (2) The second skill that you need to enable is called "LIFX". This is a Non-Native Alexa skill which allows you to control the Color of the smart bulb and requires you to say a preset keyword "Ask LIFX" . For Example "Alexa, Ask LIFX to set the Bedroom lights to Purple"- Once you enable both these skills by authenticating with your LIFX account which you created, the rest of the process is simple and you just have to ask Alexa to 'Discover Devices' (See video)THE GOOD:- Very compact size for a dimmable, color Smart bulb which makes it compatible with a wide variety of fixtures- The color temperatures can be adjusted to your preference from warm daylight tones to cool blues- The colors are vivid and you have an almost infinite palette to choose from- Supports more smart home systems than any other bulb that I've seen - It works with Alexa, Nest , Google, SmartThings, IFTTT etc- Voice control with Alexa is simple, straightforward and easy to setup- Packaged very well which should survive the harshest of shipping conditionsTHE NOT SO GOOD:- Because of the relatively smaller flat illuminated surface area of the bulb compared to a globe bulb , its light distribution is not as widespread as compared to a traditional globe surface.- This impacts the perceived brightness of the bulb - To my eyes it does not seem significantly brighter than a standard 800 Lumen LED Bulb. I've included a picture of them side by side for you to decide - hope it comes across in the picture- The software App for this bulb needs more work , its is poorly organized and overcrowded with too many sections and yet it is missing basic functionality like scheduling the bulbs. The software, on occasion, is also prone to disconnection requiring you to restart the app or turn off and On the WiFi on your phone- Some of the advertised integrations like Google was not fully working at the time of writing this review and were "Under Work"FINAL THOUGHTS:Overall the the LIFX smart bulb is a solid platform for a Smart lighting solution with deep integrations with popular smart home systems and while ~$50 is not cheap , but if you compare it to other similar smart bulbs like the TP-Link LB130 or Philips Hue its actually brighter and is a better value for money option which works great with Amazon's Alexa. The only issue I had had was with the somewhat clunky App which can and hopefully will be fixed via future software updates. I will be purchasing a few more of these bulbs to complete my living room setup.

★★★★☆ I tried out the Philips Hue lights and heard good things about this brand so I thought I'd give it a tryPros: Very bright and many neat features in the appCons: I installed 2 out of 4 of the smart bulbs with no problems but the last 2 just wouldn't connect no matter what I do. I followed same protocols, troubleshot, searched the web but couldn't get them to connect. Super frustrating. Lots of people seem to have the same problem.